View Joanna and her team’s curated concert experience with interactive exhibits and multimedia music.
The evening began in an outdoor courtyard, where every audience member learned about local bird-watching opportunities from local birders and received a unique butterfly lapel pin upon entry.
Small portable Bluetooth lamps filled the space with a calming drone as people entered the courtyard.
Inside the courtyard, there were five exhibit tables, led by local gardeners and musicians, designed to inform the audience about local nature opportunities, provide space for reflection, and offer physical means of interacting with plants and music.
Once Joanna’s team ended the exhibit time, they directed the audience inside to the multimedia music portion of the evening, where each piece on the program included a combination of surround-sound mixing, calming drones, video+fixed tracks, or acoustic music to help create a space of unhurried reflection.
Bending Sound Streams
The first piece on the program begins with gentle, droning sounds and eventually features guitar with live electronics. However, as the piece progresses, it gradually morphs into something completely different, just as our thoughts often do when we sit down to think or meditate.
Decomposing and Blossoming Thirds
The second and third pieces on the program are mixed-media compositions that aim to demonstrate the natural processes of decomposition and rebirth in plants, as well as in personal growth. “Decomposing” is a fixed media and video piece created from recorded sounds of the string quartet, “Blossoming Thirds.”
Blown Across
The fourth piece is a performance-art work, featuring another calming drone from the exhibit, poetry, and acting. The text by Amy Lowell, “The Lamp of Life”, speaks of how the motivation for chasing dreams is often found in the fact that they always seem just out of reach.
Ocean Noise
The fifth piece is video+fixed media and meant to be a reflective piece that represents the quiet of being underwater, yet still hearing and being affected by the sounds and movement happening above the water.
Guitars in the Garden
This sixth piece is a guitar trio, meant to highlight the importance of valuing seemingly small and insignificant ideas. This is demonstrated musically by the musical ideas in the first movement serving as “seeds” for most of the musical ideas in the second and third movements.
Ecosystemic Phrases
The piece to end the night was a walking vocal group, singing phrases that the audience members had written down on index cards moments before. After an usher gathered the notes from the audience, the vocal group chose phrases they though were inspiring and then spread through the concert space, then began singing the phrases as the slowly walked toward the center stage to read the phrase to the audience. Joanna will uses these phrases as inspiration to write a new work in the coming fall.
Ecosystemic Phrases Video
Phrases read by performers: “There is beauty in simplicity“, “Laugh“, “A thousand flowers will blossom“, “Don’t be afraid to try something new“, and “Love openly and without fear.”
Future curated concerts by Joanna
Joanna loves curating and crafting unique concert experiences for audiences. Reach out to hire her to plan your own concert at home or at a venue, and stay tuned for her upcoming concert creations in the fall of 2024 and 2025!
Contact: joanna.mcdonald@intervarsity.org
Photo Credits: Karis Lai Photography and friend, Grace Eichenour.
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